I have often wondered why MD-80s were not being converted to freighters. About 6 weeks ago, one of the MD-80s that left AA's fleet was designated to become a freighter, so I searched the web and found the company that will be doing the first conversions. It appears that AA's former MD-80 will be among the first of these AC to be converted, as the delivery date of the first conversion is sometime next summer.

There still are lots of DC-9 and 727 freighters flying. Now that the market value of the MD-80 has dropped as described in the URL below, it appears that many of AA's MD-80s will end up as freighters. This should also raise the value of these planes. Most of the MD-80s that have left AA's fleet have about 65,000 hours on the airframe; in contrast some of NW's MD-80s had over 100,000 hours. The DC-9 airframe was tested and found to withstand 200,000 hours, far more than the AA's birds have flown.

http://www.joc.com/.../aei-starts-md...ersion-program -

http://www.aeronautical-engineers.co...sheet_md80.pdf